


Email Ettiquette

by FrogFacey



Category: Smile For Me (Video Game)
Genre: But funny, Does it count as venting if I just push my anxieties about emails onto a character, Kamal has #emotions, Kamal says the fuck word, M/M, Spoilers, good ending, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-23 21:24:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20228236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrogFacey/pseuds/FrogFacey
Summary: Hey, Flower Kid! It’s Kamal!I’m trying to get in contact with all the old Habitat people and since you were one of the most important players back there I guess I’ll talk to you first.Was that weird? He hoped it wasn’t weird.Kamal is really,reallybad at emails.





	Email Ettiquette

**To: petaltothemetal@hotmail.com**

**From: Kamal.Bora@aol.com**

**Subject: Life… Updates I guess?**

Wait shit. That sounded too uncertain. Kamal was doing good, a bunch of stuff had happened since the Habitat, he was very much certain of his life thank you very much. 

…Very much certain he had no idea what he was doing.

**Subject: Just catching up with my favourite flower celebrity**

Fuck.

Cripes almighty he should take a breather or something. Clear his head. Stop acting like a weirdo.

**Subject: How’s life flower power?**

No.

**Subject: Friends from Habitat**

That’s fine. It’s fine. No one is going to say anything about it.

God, he hadn’t even started writing the email yet and he was losing hair.

**Hey, Flower Kid! It’s Kamal!**

He refrained from typing anything about being the guy with the toothbrush. Just in case they forgot.

They wouldn’t forget. He opened the fucking tunnel for them.

Jeez louise.

**I’m trying to get in contact with all the old Habitat people and since you were one of the most important players back there I guess I’ll talk to you first.**

Was that weird? He hoped it wasn’t weird.

**Anyway, uhh…**

What exactly was he meant to write?

Is it just five paragraphs of him talking about himself? Is that what he’d planned?

Kamal hadn’t actually thought that hard into it. He was working on a whim mostly, running off a thought he had at three am yesterday and was attempting to finish the whole thing before he realised how ridiculous it was.

He didn’t really… Well, he wasn’t that _sociable_ back in the Habitat. Most of the people he knew were either working there or Parsley.

Sure, he talked to people, but it never really amounted to much. Just a simple “Hi, how are you?” or keeping a quiet tally of anyone who seemed just a little cheered up.

Maybe he… Just wanted to boast a little?

Could it really be counted as boasting if he was talking about quitting his short-lived job scanning groceries and falling back into dentistry?

There weren’t that many dentists outside of the city.

Like, there were only two he could get to by bike because small-town bus routes sucked ass.

Fuck, this could all be shit he could be writing.

**Anyway, life has been as okay as life can be right now. Mostly just a plateau of mundane happenings. I’m a dental assistant again, no surprise there considering I wasted thousands studying for that. Cleaning teeth is boring. Cleaning teeth and giving kids lollipops and getting drooled on is boring.**

Wow real positive there Kamal.

**What I’m _trying_ to say is I think I’m missing the whole... Community thing about the Habitat. Not anything else because wow everything else was abysmal but you of all people know how it is, you made friends with everyone.**

Right. Well. With that elephant out of the way.

**So I’m thinking, and I want your professional opinion on this,**

Professional?

**I want your opinion on this. How about like… A chatboard or something? So we can talk? I’ve been slaving over pages of HTML I could probably do it myself if it comes to it. I just think it would be good because I know Wallus is missing Questionette because I met up with him the other day and he was saying something about translators and whatever. He’s doing well, out of his hole at least. I saw Parsley last week too. He was talking about his Dad or whatever, something about legal documents, something about the cute guy he’d seen the other day. I don’t know, he was leaving for a bus like two seconds later and said bye at record speed. And I know that kid with the superhero cape probably needs someone who isn’t a weird guy at a comic store to talk to.**

Ah, right, time for the second elephant.

The large, in charge, vaguely terrifying elephant.

The elephant which was infinitely more difficult to shove out of the room.

**Habit emailed me too. Asked me to lunch or something. God, he’s tall, he had to duck to get through the door, it was terrifying. He’s got a therapist now! Can you believe? Anyway as we were leaving he dug around in his pockets and I thought he was going to pull a knife on me or something but he… Gave me a toothbrush and mumbled something about being bad at apologies? And something about hoping that it would, at least, help him convince himself that he was trying. It was hard to understand on account of the… Everything but I think…**

What did he think?

God, it was a bad idea to bring up Boris so quickly. He was on a roll, talking about friend get-togethers and shit. Of course, he had to derail his own conversation with pointless shit that could probably either go in a completely different message for another time or go away completely.

Christ, he was bad at this.

His cursor hovered over the chunk of text, ready to click delete and rewrite the whole thing.

Except…

**I think he’s been thinking too. He told me that he missed me and misses you and has been beating himself up about the whole thing on the daily. His extra teeth are gone now too. He’s back to his regular… Thirty? I thought he would have kept a tooth for his missing ones but he’s back to pretty much normal. Pink scrunchie and everything. I think that might be proof enough at least to one part of my brain that he’s changed. Or changing.**

He’d covered his mouth while he smiled through half a bite of cafe pastry. He forgot to cover his mouth on the drive home.

It was weird.

He seemed almost normal.

And Kamal _knew_ that because when he pulled him into a hug he didn’t smell like rust and artificial and too sweet bubblegum.

That was jarring at first.

Come to think of it, everything about him was.

First and foremost it was the only time he’d seen him wearing short sleeves. Back in the Habitat, the air conditioning was on full blast 24/7 and he’d wear his giant, heavy coat around the place to keep warm. But now… He had an ugly floral button up with the sleeves pulled up to the elbows and Kamal had to do a double-take because part of him was convinced he didn’t actually have arms.

And… He looked like a normal person, more normal than he had the entire time Kamal had been working for him. His face was Glowy? That was the term people used, right? He didn’t look like he’d just finished crying two minutes ago, he was actually brushing his hair (not that he could tell before, with how curly it was he hadn’t even noticed), he carried himself differently. He still had the slight hunch, but he looked calmer.

It was strange.

**I’m surprised he wasn’t greying honestly. I had no idea he was that stressed back when I was his assistant until I saw him out of work. You know how elastic bands get all wrinkly when you pull them too hard? Bad metaphor but you get what I mean. Like, when you finally release the stress and it snaps and probably hits your thumb on the way out but you find it halfway across the room looking fine. He was like that, a little stretched out but so frickin _normal_ it was scary.**

Habit had driven him to his house, just to show him what life had been like for the past year.

It was a small house with a tree out front with plants _everywhere_. There were more plants than there were garden ornaments. A creeping vine slowly making its way up a plastic flamingo, flowers across the deck, a hedge across his picket fence.

His plants needed watering, apparently, and Kamal was left to stand in his garden (and eventually his living room) alone. Taking everything in.

**He’s offered to help pay for dentures for you after… That. Unless you’re rocking the snaggle teeth in which good for you I guess? I can pass on the message if you want. Or I could give you his email address? He’s been emailing me nonstop for the past month almost. About anything really. He emailed me to tell me his flowers were blooming which was cute, and then he emailed me to tell me the soup he’d made was tasty and told me he’d save me some. Maybe I could just make a chatlog for him, it’d be more efficient than email I guess. With the amount he talks to me, he’d at least get some use out of it. If I could get him to use it.**

**I’m not saying that if the whole Habitat Chat thing happens that Boris will actually be a part of it? I don’t think anyone would actually want him to be there.**

Wait shit that sounded rude. 

**I mean I think people would rather… You know what I mean. I think it’d be good for Boris too. He’s still a little weepy. He feels bad, genuinely and he’s really uncomfortable about the whole thing because he keeps stumbling over saying sorry.**

It wasn’t uncomfortable really, the afternoon at Boris’s house. When he came back from his plant-related errands he went straight back to talking.

It was mostly about life plans.

He was finally working on that florist thing, he’d been getting everything together to get a license. Do you need a license to be a florist?

He knew there had to be some catch to opening a store but he wasn’t exactly sure if there was anything to do with licenses.

Boris had a medical license and knew robotics and puppetry and architecture how hard could opening a store be?

Boris talked about his garden and how nice his therapist was and how excited he was to finally have something else to do and how just _maybe_ his flowers would be able to make people smile.

Yeah, he was still hung up on making people happy.

At least it was constructive? And wasn’t going to end in the theft of body parts?

Kamal pinned it down to the fact that “that was just the kind of man Habit was” and tried to think nothing else of it.

**It still bugs me out that Boris actually goes to therapy though. All the times I saw him flopping around his office half lucid rambling about “tipsi top esi frownes” have stuck it in my brain that he was always going to be like that. I mean he talked to me but it was mostly just him moping about something for a second and then grinning and telling me not to worry, that everything would be ready soon. It was always about that damn ~big event~. I wonder what he does now that he has nothing to prepare for? Garden I guess.**

He dialled himself back before he could dive into a ramble about if he still pulled his hair when he was stressed. Or if he still got the bad nightmares. Or if he still shoved his fingers into his mouth absentmindedly, poking the new tooth where he was missing his real one.

Was he still spacey? Did he still go into episodes and sway around his office mumbling and swinging his arms around like he was trying to accentuate what he was saying? Did he still hide in corners when he was feeling sad?

Easy, Kamal.

He hadn’t even asked if the kid would be alright dealing with his venting.

Fuck.

**Shit, this was meant to be about a chat room.**

Part of his brain told him to censor himself.

He didn’t work with Habit anymore and he was a grown fucking man and this wasn’t a professional setting he was _allowed_ to swear in emails.

**I just hijacked this to talk about my ex-boss. Here’s some life tips kid, don’t try to write something coherent on three hours of sleep tops. It doesn’t work. Okay I’ll… Write something else that is actually about my actual intentions and not just a ramble about work. God, okay so!**

Shit.

Time to actually think of a plan.

**I sorted admin so I have all the old email addresses but if anyone’s updated theirs and you know could you send them to me? I’m planning on messaging a bunch of other people (like 19 christ this is going to take forever) so I can get their opinions and if they want to be left out and stuff.**

He bit his lip.

**I’ll… Also email Habit. I can add you so you can get caught up on all the life updates I missed out on in my tired ass emotional daze if you want. I _completely_ understand if you don’t but... He’ll be happy to talk to you I think.**

He exhaled, rubbing his temples and hitting his head on his keyboard.

Fuck his eyes hurt. His eyes hurt and his head hurt.

He pulled his knees up to his chest on instinct, reading through the last little bit visible on the screen, squinting to stop his vision from blurring.

**Anyway, sorry for that wall of text. I’ll get everything sorted out until then I’ll keep in touch? If you want to.**

**See you on the flip side  
-Kamal**

He paused over the send button, setting his chin down on his knees.

God he could just delete the Habit talk and keep it as a brisk two paragraphs and everything would be fine but…

He felt like he needed to talk to someone about it. About how _insane_ his last couple of months were.

And… Flower Kid would find it entertaining at least? He’d probably get an email back with a coupon for an online counsellor knowing them.

He hesitated for one second and bit his lip, scrunched his eyes closed and pressed send.

And in the one second it took for the anxiety to bubble up again he clicked back to the website of home recipes he was on before, finding one that didn’t seem too complicated and saving it.

**To: Doctor.BorisHabit@hotmail.com**  
**From:Kamal.Bora@aol.com**  
**Subject: Food!**

Wait no.

**Subject: Recipe idea?**

Better.

**Author's Note:**

> hats off to me for getting into such a tiny fandom I guess.
> 
> I'm surprised there isn't an actual tag for this ship yet I've seen at least ten other fics
> 
> (edit: 64 kudos hell yeah that's the minecraft number)


End file.
